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CDC data are disappearing

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Re: CDC data are disappearing

#641

Post by worksonmine »

breadwinner wrote: post #240

Data is the ultimate Fact Check. This is a President that's adamantly opposed to fact checking [1] and has even coerced Facebook to drop fact checking. Of course they don't want data on government sites that disprove their "alternate facts". [1] https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4920827-60-minutes-tru...

During covid links to the CDC that could be used by vaccine skeptics were flagged on Facebook. There was an actual problem with the fact-checking and it was often judged by who benefited from the information rather than the truth behind the information.

Re: CDC data are disappearing

#642

Post by worksonmine »

neumann wrote: post #428
SeptiumMMX wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, fact-checking works if it's done impartially. So, if you want to fairly fact-check a political debate, each side should have their own team of researchers/fact-checkers being equally able to object to an argument made by the opposing party. Due process, sort of, kind of. But I don't think I've ever seen that done actually. Usually, fact checkers are akin to Reddit moderators. Technically independent, but with o…

Pretty confident that now that critical thinking has been thrown out the window and accountability has disappeared in political discourse this would just result in endless objections in any debate deliberately used to add noise and misdirect conversation. I don't know what the solution is in today's climate, but I suspect it no longer matters. America is post-truth and he who controls the data and pathways to informa…

> Pretty confident that now that critical thinking has been thrown out the window and accountability has disappeared in political discourse

Politicians and the media have always lied about big and small details. The difference is that social media has made it easier to dispute, and now we started noticing it more. Now that they can't gatekeep the information anymore they adopted the word "misinformation" to deal with the problem. "It may be true, but it's misinformation, trust us, we have your best interests in mind".

Remember the trusted news initiative from covid? That was an attempt to continue gatekeeping, anything from any other sources was considered false and unverified, and the global media all had the same talking points at the same time. It was terrifying to see how easy everyone conformed.

Re: CDC data are disappearing

#643

Post by Ajedi32 »

dylan604 wrote: post #131
diggan wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Musk is evidently seizing control of the Office of Personnel Management Suddenly I feel out of the loop when it comes to US politics, how come Musk is suddenly seemingly seizing control of parts of the US government? I don't recall him being on any ballots or anything?

Not every person in the government is elected. Some positions are appointed. Not one judge from SCOTUS is elected. None of the members of the president's cabinet are elected. They are all Senate confirmed though, which is what's going on now with the current clown show. Somehow, Musk has created a role for himself where he even gets to bypass the Senate confirmation stage. That's the most disconcerting thing to me. N…

> the fact that he has this much power totally unchecked.

I think this is just a symptom of the amount of power the office of the president has accumulated over the years. Musk has no authority on his own; he's acting on the authority of the president.

Due to the number of things Congress has delegated to the executive branch over the years, that's quite a lot of unchecked power indeed. But it's not Musk's power, it's the president's.

Re: CDC data are disappearing

#644

Post by lucb1e »

hackyhacky wrote: post #597
lucb1e wrote: post #596

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah come on, what you've cited is obvious to everyone but a delusional 0.001%. They do not need a podium for that

You're not an American, so maybe you aren't aware how widespread conspiracy theories are in the US and how much they influence the public discourse. As a trivial example, the American Senate is currently interviewing the nominee for the head of Health and Human Services, which oversees the NIH, CDC, and FDA, among other agencies. The nominee, Robert F Kennedy Jr, has been very outspoken in his opinions, some of which…

Are they so widespread because of this "both parties/sides' views need to be represented" perhaps? And is that why they influence discourse so much, because they have to be brought up again and again?

Of course, you're right that I'm not an American, it may be that I'm missing something that would have been clear to me. Not meaning to pretend to know it all, just hoping that an outside perspective (from a place where, from my POV, it works better even if far from perfect) might be helpful

Re: CDC data are disappearing

#645

Post by iugtmkbdfil834 »

astrange wrote: post #512
iugtmkbdfil834 wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm. If things are not getting harder then either they stay the same or get better. I would find it hard to argue for either of those positions, but I would welcome you to try to defend that "things are not getting harder". In just about every possible metric outside of maybe "few really, really wealthy individuals make more money" things are not getting better or are stable. Are you maybe suggesting that what is goo…

Income inequality in the US hasn't increased since 2014 and is sharply decreased since 2019. Lower income people are making more money than ever. There was a period of no income growth for upper-middle class people, however, which probably made them unhappy. https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w31010/w310... What did happen in the last two years was there was a "vibecession" where everyone decided to pre…

Ok. First, the 1st paper is interesting, but I can't digest it now. Added to the list for later.

That said, temporarily ignoring the paper, income in absolute terms may have well increased, but from 2014 to 2024 we also had ~33% official CPI inflation ( edit: which is well above FED's goal ), which effectively eroded any gains average person may have managed to eke out. In other words, it is not a vibe whem that 100k+ is getting you ~33% less. It is simply what things are.

I am not hopeful, but I am willing to accept it as a possible outcome.

Re: CDC data are disappearing

#646

Post by tialaramex »

theGnuMe wrote: post #440
hackyhacky wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe they are. The solution to this is to provide evidence in favor of your argument. That's how we used to resolve conflicting opinions: debates supported by evidence. Now, instead, we're simply getting rid of any attempt to decide what is factual, and instead let demagogues decide for us what is fact and what is not, without any evidence at all. Since evidence is now superfluous, why waste government money by prov…

The internet was designed to be robust in the event of nuclear war. Maybe it’s time for distributed data caches. Maybe we encode it all in crypto currency.

No, it wasn't.

Re: CDC data are disappearing

#647

Post by lucb1e »

hackyhacky wrote: post #622
johnnyanmac wrote: post #609

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay? Then you disprove their claims and their bad sources. If they don't want to understand that, there's nothing to do. They are not a reasonable audience to debate with logos at that point. Them denying nature's truth doesn't allieve them from nature's forces.

Do you honestly think that people who believe these things will be swayed by facts and evidence? Go watch some flat earther videos on YouTube. Lots of people are very committed to a particular conclusion and have developed elaborate processes for disregarding evidence that would persuade a rational person. The US political system right now is built on believing easily disprovable lies. Unfortunately, their bad choice…

> Do you honestly think that people who believe these things will be swayed by facts and evidence?

I've got two data points to offer!

For one, some research from last year showed that

> Over three rounds of back-and-forth interaction, [a tuned version of GPT-4 Turbo], also known as DebunkBot, was able to significantly reduce individuals’ beliefs in the particular theory the believer articulated, as well as lessen their conspiratorial mindset more generally — a result that proved durable for at least two months.

https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/mit-study-ai-c...

It's not like the chatbot gave them a beating or something, so it must be appeals to reason and evidence that did something? At least, that's my takeaway

Second data point is an anecdote. I somehow ended up on this flat earther youtube video where they had gotten their viewers to fund them an expedition to the south pole (wtf is a south pole if the earth is flat? Where did they fly out to? Idk, they seemed to have an alternative hypothesis in case the earth really was flat, such that this "experiment" mattered) to, and I shit you not, observe that the sun does not set during summer. Why they didn't just ask someone living beyond the (ant)arctic circle, I don't know, but so they're stood there watching the sun, waiting for it to set. It didn't, and after another glance at a wristwatch that it really is midnight, they now said they believed that the earth is in fact round because their alternative hypothesis had been disproven

Whether many of the viewers on youtube believed it, I have no idea. Also conspicuously missing from the video was any sort of remark hinting at "gee, what everyone outside of our little community said turned out to be right, I wonder if maybe this could mean that there isn't some big conspiracy going on", so perhaps they'll go on to believe the next useless thing now and it was all for naught? I'm not deep enough into conspiracy theory, but it does seem to me that: if you get them to work it all out (whatever that means for them) to a point where there is an experiment you can sensibly do, or evidence they can obtain or so, they'll actually be swayed if given that evidence. Or at least some of them are. (Or maybe these are just really good actors and getting a free holiday to the most exclusive continent by becoming famous was their long con all along, who's to say, but I'm inclined to apply occam's and hanlon's razors.)

Re: CDC data are disappearing

#648

Post by lucb1e »

trashtester wrote: post #569
lucb1e wrote: post #532

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you expose the public to many different biased opinions and let them learn to recognize the biases [then good stuff] Is that an assumption, or based on research? Based on the last couple years of elections, I'd guess that exposing the public to every opinion ever makes people vote for the most catchy sound-bite. I don't follow american news enough to echo whatever people echo over there (perhaps "pro life"? Not…

Hmm, I'm not sure the "do we want more or fewer muslims in this country?" question is as rethorical as you say. Also, I don't think the main real reasons for such a question are the economical ones, even if that DOES matter to some. It appears that the main concern for the populist right is that the people (ethnicity + culture) they identify with will become a minority or even disappear at some point. One can always…

> if there are no restrictions on immigration

But there are. I'm not aware that even the most pro-"share the love" party thinks we can unilaterally make the decision to let just anybody into Schengen (the EU-related freedom of movement area), or that it would be a good thing if they could. The problem is that the fascist parties want to deny people entry, and evict people who built lives here, who can prove that they fear for their life in the country of origin (such as war refugees), which seems inhumane to me and the european convention on human rights iirc aligns with that as well. It's not something you can just stop doing under national or european law, but by framing it in the right way they create a boogeyman where it's not mainly war refugees but religious terrorists and gold diggers coming into the country

> "What is the maximum number of we want to have in our country?" If even asking this question is a taboo

That is not taboo. This topic is discussed by every party, of course, and a topic of negotiations between European countries ("will you take this many then we will do this other thing"). The taboo is discrimination, verbal in this case. It harms minorities for no benefit and that's why that is illegal per (what I think is in English called) the constitution ("grondwet")

---

To me it feels like you're approaching this from a forced neural point of view. That feels very odd to say, because of course neutrality and objectivity is good; not sure I'm expressing this right. Maybe it's like... feels like searching for a way to frame it as neutral no matter how extreme (inhumane, uncommon) it really is to say that you would close the door on someone who shows up at your doorstep in mortal peril. No human would do that if personally faced with that choice. The inflammatory statement I gave as example is meant to rile people up against a minority group and gain votes, it's not aimed at starting a rational discussion because that has already been ongoing since time immemorial

Re: CDC data are disappearing

#649

Post by astrange »

iugtmkbdfil834 wrote: post #645
astrange wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Income inequality in the US hasn't increased since 2014 and is sharply decreased since 2019. Lower income people are making more money than ever. There was a period of no income growth for upper-middle class people, however, which probably made them unhappy. https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w31010/w310... What did happen in the last two years was there was a "vibecession" where everyone decided to pre…

Ok. First, the 1st paper is interesting, but I can't digest it now. Added to the list for later. That said, temporarily ignoring the paper, income in absolute terms may have well increased, but from 2014 to 2024 we also had ~33% official CPI inflation ( edit: which is well above FED's goal ), which effectively eroded any gains average person may have managed to eke out. In other words, it is not a vibe whem that 100k…

Don't insult my intelligence like that. I would never quote nominal income to you. My post was inflation adjusted.

Re: CDC data are disappearing

#650

Post by astrange »

latexr wrote: post #560
viraptor wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's going to be a couple months at most. If it's not punished immediately, it's practically legal with the current gov. And the next one will have way bigger things to unfuck than some missing documents.

> And the next one will have way bigger things to unfuck than some missing documents. Assuming there is going to be a next one which isn’t wholly aligned with the current one. That’s far from a given.

The federal government has no control over the elections that replace it.
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